LabBook March 23, 2013

Pieces from the annual Comer Children’s Hospital Art Show, on display through the end of the month. The show features artwork created by patients and their families with the help of an art therapist.

Welcome to LabBook, our weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences research news from around campus and the internet. Each Friday, LabBook will recap the week on the blog, link to news stories about our faculty and studies, and briefly summarize a handful of recent publications by our researchers.

Also last week, Mike McHugh spoke to pediatrician and bioethicist Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross about the new recommendations on genetic screening for children issued jointly by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. Ross was the lead author on the policy statement, the first set of guidelines on testing children for genetic diseases in more than a decade.

Carrageenan is a common food additive used to give foods texture, but it has been linked to digestive problems. This week the Chicago Tribune wrote about a small clinical trial by Dr. Stephen Hanauer to assess carrageenan’s safety.

The Trib also interviewed Dr. Raymond Roos, director of our multidisciplinary ALS clinic, about advances in research and treatments for ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease (I’ll be posting my own interview with Dr. Roos in a few weeks as well).

Finally, several members of our biological sciences faculty recently received named professorships, including: geneticist and dean for research and graduate education Dr. T. Conrad Gilliam, neurosurgeon Dr. Issam Awad, cardiologist Dr. James Liao, cardiologist and geneticist Dr. Elizabeth McNally and dermatologist Dr. Christopher Shea. You can read more about their work in our Newsroom.